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Australia Story
Loving the Grave Not Yet Dug
A sweat-slicked, overworked deli woman stands before me, arm extended with the weight of poverty and its favourite mystery meat – Devon. With sunken eyes and a tired smile, I get the sense we are both well acquainted with it. My last five dollars is spent and so am I, grocery bags digging into the…
March 7, 2024
Australia Japan Story
Untethered
I prepare for Tokyo by quitting vapes. One week until departure, and I’ve not bought a single item on my list. I’m a zombie, moving through life in a cloud of smoke. My share house from the last six months is ejecting me. I have nowhere to live. It’s a repeat of last January, when…
January 19, 2024
Australia Story
Friends on the Road
The allure of solo travel can promise what sounds like an easy escape into uncharted waters. New lands to be discovered by your feet and new sensations to be snorted up by your senses. Because you, my squirmish friend, have been stuck in the trap of the humdrum, day-to-day existence of ordinary life. You’ve already had…
June 20, 2023
Australia Story
Blackface Ghost Town
The events depicted below are based on real experiences I had in Australia from 2020 to 2022. The names of people and places have been removed. Not to protect them, but rather to accommodate the handful of names that have relentlessly built and pushed forward the same issues I am about to address. Think of…
March 10, 2023
Australia Story
Oceans of Memory
She sits hunched on the edge of a garden bed on Cavill Avenue, carry-on suitcase beside her, head in her hands. The scenery is picturesque: perfectly preened garden, spotless blue sky, sun blazing, the sound of seabirds constant but soothing – at least to any other listener. Inside her head, a storm rages. It wasn’t…
October 27, 2022
Australia Fiction Story
Everyday Heroes
In times of peace, they were strictly enemies. Mr Wilson sat on his porch, sweating in front of an old desk fan, glowering at the boys who sat in the park, drinking beer on sun-baked afternoons, smoking cigarettes, hawking at the back of their throats, spitting, playing loud music, swearing, intimidating passers-by. They wore Nike-branded…
April 13, 2022
Story
Waldeinsamkeit
Waldeinsamkeit (n.) (German): The feeling of being alone in the woods. Embodies a connectedness with nature and the peace experienced in that moment. You know the feeling. The one you get after an early morning swim in the ocean – the flowing electricity that passes through you as you dive under that first wave.…
January 4, 2022
Australia Story
Unwired
It was a feeling of liberation, the same kind when you get home and unzip your pants and take off your bra. Except I wasn’t at home and running around half-naked. I was on a hill farm, decently clothed. It had rained overnight. The land was covered in a damp, piercing coldness, reeking of fresh…
November 8, 2021
Editorial
Finding Solace in Solitude at Eighteen
After hours cruising along the lone highway with nothing but my own thoughts, the bustling city centres that loom beyond exit signs seem ironically uninviting. Daunting, even. It was a shivering autumn's day when I tentatively told my friends at lunch that I wanted to buy a van. In between classes, those 40 minutes gave…
March 17, 2021

Astray is a storytelling project centred on travel, place, culture and identity.

We’re run by a team of writers who mostly live, work and play in nipaluna / Hobart. With reverence, we acknowledge the Tasmanian Aboriginal people as the traditional and ongoing custodians of trouwunna / lutruwita / Tasmania: land that was stolen and never ceded. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.